Around fifteen years ago, the nature photographer John Eastcott shared one of my favorite ideas I've heard about art: "when you take a photograph of something, you give it time." A photograph declares the importance of what the frame shows (and, sometimes, does not show). It's an idea that lives next to Cartier-Bresson's "decisive moment:" rather than the ideal photograph occurring at the ideal moment in time, the photograph in and of itself makes a photographed moment ideal. It gives…

My grandma saw The Dybbuk in theaters at nine years old. Tonight, 84 years later, we watched The Dybbuk on her television, in her room as we ate dinner together. It is an experience I will cherish for the rest of my life.

The Dybbuk was filmed in Poland 17 years after the last of my blood relatives left the old country. There’s little I can know about the day-to-day lives and beliefs of my direct ancestors, and though this…

I, uh, hated it

edit (11/01/18):
This is quickly becoming my most liked review ever and I’m not thrilled with the thought of that distinction going to a review made up of four words and two punctuation marks (give my Cameraperson review a like instead!). I want to expand on why Suspiria not only did not click with me, but why the script misses the mark for its character development and its thematic, political commentary. The latter is the objectively…

It is exactly as galaxy-brain’d or pat as you, personally, think it is. Is it about assimilation? Sexuality? Compromise in high-budget artmaking? 20th century Zionism; 21st century Zionism? Art/artist discourse? Addiction, physical ability, trauma, cultural Jewishness, genius, idiocy, wealth, sexual coercion, partnership, the American dream? Sure, and also lotsa other stuff too, like “what if Adrien Brody had and then did not have a beard?”

A helpful contrast is Ricky D’Ambrose’s The Cathedral, a movie that is geometrically designed as…